do the "same" thing using dd. Whatever your db_block_size is, plug it in as follows: $ time dd if=<datafile_for_the tablespace> of=-/dev/null bs=<block_size_in_bytes*16> then re-run: $ time dd if=<datafile_for_the tablespace> of=-/dev/null bs=<block_size_in_bytes*128> please let me know what you find ________________________________ From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kevin Lidh Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 12:46 PM To: oracle-l Subject: I/O and db_file_multiblock_read_count I was reading an article about the appropriate setting for db_file_multiblock_read_count. I'm on a HP-UX 11.11 64-bit system with Oracle 9.2.0.7.0. The original value was 16 and I bounced the database and ran a million record full-scan test (10046 trace) and then set the value to 128 (max value) and re-ran the